Folder Permission Error On Windows 7 Using Xampp

I'm a newbie
I using windows 7 and running XAMPP on local hard drive
I setup a test application called helloworld using the command
yiic webapp helloworld

When I run test the index file in my browser in localhost mode
I get an error: 'Access forbidden!

You don't have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server. '

the tutorial I am following says I should make sure 'assets/ and protected/runtime/ directories are writable by your web server process...' but does not explain how to do this.

Any ideas why this is the default? I would expect that yii would just work without having to play around with permissions settings on my machine? I did standard install of xampp on my machine and put the yii folder in the htdocs folder. All pretty straightforward so why the hassle with permissions?

I don't think it's caused by Yii, on Windows environment you simply don't need to set the permission of assets & runtime folder. You can do a simple check by creating your own index.html or index.php in site's root directory and try to access it, does it work?